Writer: Zoë Clayton-Kelly
One of the many wonderful things about Zoë Clayton-Kelly’s one-woman show, One Hundred and Thirty Thousand Squirrels in London (And I Want Them All to Love Me), is that the title is never explained. Nor do we miss it when there’s such a wealth of comic invention throughout. It’s a gem of a show, Clayton-Kelly is like an Australian Victoria Wood for the 2020s.
Her tightly knit set consists of a handful of songs, each more hilarious than the last. They’re not just a collection of funny lines – but highly imaginative, totally surreal stories. In her first, Existential Thoughts of a Freelancer, she wonders about the jersey an old man in the pub has put on the stool beside him. Is he saving it for someone? Or is it – could it be? – the last thing his wife wore before she died? In no time at all, Clayton-Kelly has conjured up the dead wife, floating above her in the sky like a latter-day Mary Poppins, dispensing wise advice.
Somewhere in the course of the first song, she gets a call from her agent. Will she take a gig as a children’s birthday party entertainer? Oh, and she needs to come dressed as Princess Fiona from Shrek. So in her second song, she has dutifully smeared on the green makeup and put together a basket of balloons, only to find that Jeremy, the birthday boy, is two. Abandoning her basket of tricks, she sits down at the piano and belts out an increasingly sardonic song about what life is likely to throw at you – Happy Birthday, Jeremy! – becoming ever more comically bleak.
Clayton-Kelly has a nice line in miming to recorded voices, particularly effective in her sketch of an Australian flight attendant. She then transforms into one of those really maddening wellness enthusiasts, before a nicely daft song about floating naked in a magnesium bath beside her mother. The final two songs are equally fabulous, but it would be a pity to give away too much in a review.
Clayton-Kelly is comedy gold. Catch her at the Edinburgh Festival!
Reviewed on 14 August 2025 and then at Edinburgh Fringe
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
The Reviews Hub Star Rating